


"Don't Know if I'm Comin' or Goin'"

by write_light



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Community: spn_reversebang, M/M, Supernatural Reverse Big Bang Challenge 2011, Video, spn_reversebang2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-10
Updated: 2011-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-26 12:06:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/282900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_light/pseuds/write_light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you need to hold your dead brother, there are always obstacles. When you're a Winchester, death is no obstacle at all, but capital-D Death drives a hard bargain.  Inspired by reliand's amazing video.  Sam's life after Dean is no life, but his death isn't what he pictured either, and it's definitely not what Death was hoping for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Don't Know if I'm Comin' or Goin'"

**Author's Note:**

> Subheadings are all Echo & the Bunnymen songs. Betaed by the amazing [](http://keerawa.livejournal.com/profile)[**keerawa**](http://keerawa.livejournal.com/) with a little assist from [](http://geckoholic.livejournal.com/profile)[**geckoholic**](http://geckoholic.livejournal.com/) and [](http://reliand.livejournal.com/profile)[**reliand**](http://reliand.livejournal.com/). Written as part of [spn_reversebang](http://spn_reversebang.livejournal.com/profile)'s 2011 challenge, inspired by [reliand](http://reliand.livejournal.com/profile)'s amazing video, "Your Ghost." Video is [HERE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng3QvZIK-do). Warning for suicide in both video and story.

 

 

[ ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng3QvZIK-do)

 

* * *

 

  
**Don't Know If I'm Comin' or Goin'**   


 

* * *

  
A hush fell over the world. There weren't many sounds like it, Sam thought – maybe that instant just after the Impala stopped shattering and twisting around the truck's grille, after all the pieces rained back to earth… _then_ it was that quiet. He waited for his body to scream from every cell, the way it had in the car, all those years ago, when he heard Dean dying in the back seat, the only sound that made it through the silence. He listened for that sound again, the high whistling intake of terror – the same way his mind had screamed when Lucifer burned through it and he could just barely make out the Cage closing above them as he died. Again. This made three times. Or four. The hush continued, muffling every thought.

* * *

  
  
**"Shine So Hard"**

Sam woke, alone. The emptiness of the room and the street outside pressed on him even from far away. There was nothing around him now, nothing but sheets and a mattress and a sweaty t-shirt and boxers clinging to him, holding him there.

He was crying, before he woke and after. He yelled out Dean's name, still seeing his brother fading into the distance, driving off down the road like every other time they'd parted ways for a second or a week or a lifetime in Hell, only to find each other again in embraces that bonded the world back together.

The half-moon shone so hard through the window that it lit even the dark, stained carpeting. Two weeks more and the nights would be black again, moonless and quiet, a time Sam loved. He'd always watched the moon out the back window of the Impala, following them as their father drove further and further from a life that was safe. Sam waited, as he watched the moon moving over them, straining to hear Dean slip into sleep in the front seat, or even better, waiting for the rare times Dean insisted the back seat was his and shoved Sam over, settling quickly back to rest, tight against his side, as only Dean could do.

They'd slept that way a few times since they'd started hunting again, on the rare occasion that their last credit card was cut off, or they needed to lay low for a while; Dean usually took the front seat and waited for Sam to get out and climb in the back before he lapsed into a deep rhythmic breathing, snoring softly. Every time, Sam waited for that sound, and once in a while, when it was truly dark and wintry, Dean would join him in the back seat, and those warm breaths would fall on Sam's neck.

The room now was empty and airless; the street outside hadn't seen a car in hours. No passing tires, no rumble, no headlights in the window, only a blazing white moon that Sam no longer looked at.

He couldn't look at the moon now; it had watched Dean die and done nothing but return for twelve months, waiting for this moment to celebrate its anniversary of inaction, of remote watchfulness and indifference, fat and shining above the world. Below it in the canyon Dean lay amid the wreck of his beloved car and choked on his blood and died alone.

Sam sat up, swinging his legs toward the glittering ground, then pulled them back out of the pool of cold light. He stared at his feet, feeling the crumbs under them, the threadbare carpet over boards that creaked as he rose and made his way to the single desk, tapped the phone a couple of times and got a groggy, unappreciative Bobby on the line.

"What the Hell, Sam, it's four a.m."

"Sorry, Bobby, I meant to call-"

He stopped there, hiding it, but he knew Bobby knew.

"Don't, Sam. Take the job, be what you always wanted to be. And _let him go_. You've given him a year of your life, and now you go on."

"Right. I go on." He didn't believe it for a minute, but he had the voice right.

"Good. Go back to goddamned bed and I'll call you in a few days. _At your office._ "

Sam's lips twisted in grief and anger at the betrayal he was contemplating. He pulled them back enough to give his reply the tone of a serious and professional man of 30.

"Have your people call my people," he said, and thought _A joke, even. You better appreciate that, Bobby._

Bobby hung up and Sam was alone again in a moonlit wilderness he couldn't bear to look at. He could feel the crash site, out there in the distance, see himself slipping and stumbling down the rock slope into the wreck of his life.

* * *

  
**"Prove Me Wrong"**

A week later, Bobby called as promised, and the receptionist put him through.

"You need a receptionist?" Bobby asked, and Sam knew it was wrong – the wrong life for him.

"It comes with the job," he said, trying to remain calm. "What did you find out about the deaths north of town?"

"Nothing I can't handle. There's a hunter from Caledonia on it already. She works alone, so don't you go thinking you need to leave your desk job."

"Thanks, Bobby. You thought of everything," Sam said, not able to disguise the bitterness in his voice this time.

Bobby let the silence grow for a moment, then said what he'd said a hundred times: "You gave Dean his turn; you take yours now. Be normal. As normal as you can be."

The receptionist buzzed Sam's other line and cut Bobby off in the process.

"Sorry, sir. I can call him back."

"Don't."

"You're due in court at 11."

"I'll- Thank you."

Sam hung up and folded his hands together, burying his face in them to escape into the dark. He saw Dean chuckling at him, amazement and ridicule and pride all on display at once.

"Dean," Sam began, and caught himself.

"My baby brother, all grown up and defending the helpless," Sam imagined Dean saying to him, putting words in the mouth of the image he saw, a ghostly Dean who looked somehow impressed and unimpressed at what Sam had become in just under a year.

Sam was no longer alone; he'd slotted himself into the lower rungs of a law firm as a promising up-and-comer, and his life was beginning to fill with clients and meetings and the ever-present woman the company had provided to type his reports for him. She more than anyone matched Dean's amazement and pride and he couldn't understand why, but she never pushed him to talk, even when she saw how fast the whiskey in his office went down, or when she overheard pieces of his one-sided conversations.

"Dean, I need to talk to you," Sam whispered.

His phone vibrated against his hip and he pulled it out, expecting it to be Bobby again, but it was Dean.

He stared at the screen without reaction because it made no sense. It was Dean's number, and Dean had no number, no phone, and no life left to call him. But his phone said otherwise. He shut it off and went quickly down the hall to the restroom in a hot sweat, ignoring the receptionist's concerned voice and his colleagues' suspicious glances.

***

Home again. His apartment was a fixed place that weighed on him like an anchor. He'd moved all his life and needed to keep moving now. The place drove him crazy, stuck on the second floor between all the other boxes, between the elderly man from Ecuador who dyed his hair black and smelled of aftershave and the single mother with three kids and barely-controlled diabetes, who told Sam he was "just too thin." Sam fiddled with the keys, muttering to himself.

"A fucking year, Dean. You up and go, and tell me to make a normal life. When the hell did you find time to write that into a will and not let me know?" he said out loud as the front door closed behind him. He grabbed the handle again, wanting to get out already, then stopped, twisting the handle nervously, his forehead against the door. "What kind of life could I have? Sam Winchester, lawyer for the downtrodden. Saving people and hunting prosecutors."

His voice became low and harsh as he headed for the kitchen. "You shit. You drove off into the fucking night and flipped yourself over a guardrail and out of here for good."

He wished the car had survived the crash so he could drive and think of Dean, get out of town, get back on the road under the black night sky and look for his brother, somewhere out on a curving by-way, waiting for him. _Dean the hitchhiker._

Sam laughed, and thought he heard Dean laughing back.

"It's cold, Dean. Just like it was last year. Road over the hills is probably just as icy." Sam's voice trailed off as the scene of that next morning came back to him. "Make a normal life… how?"

He tossed the phone on the counter by Tuesday's takeout Chinese, mostly uneaten and now congealed. "Dad called you once, years after he'd died, that thing that wasn't Dad." He'd seen the awful look on Dean's face, dark with anger and pain. Sam tried hard not to see that look on his own face now, but the phone before him was dark and still, and the screen reflected a thin man, his hair longer than a lawyer's should be, the requisite suit fitting his wiry body less well each day.

The phone buzzed again and Sam jumped, but it was only the virtual assistant, trying to be helpful. He picked the phone up, poking it to shut off the reminders of what he had to do, and the month's calendar stared back at him, a field of stars for the days he'd filled with appointments. In the middle, like a pupil watching him, was the black and empty day that was no one's but his. He hadn't even had words for that line on the paperwork to ask for a day off so soon after starting.

The TV flickered as he turned it on but it soon cleared up. He silently cursed the wind, and the kids who hung out on the roof, tossing cigarettes and beer caps and whatever else they had into the cheap satellite dish to escape their boredom. Sam drank his second full glass of whiskey.

"Shut up, Dean. You drank and it didn't kill you." A wry smile twisted his face and he shoved the pain deeper down. Somewhere after the Late Show and the first part of the Stooges marathon, he dozed off and the glass slipped his hand.

***

"Sammy, get your shit together. You've had a year to get over me, move on. You're walking through the lawyer shtick like a zombie and drinking twice what I did at the worst," Dean said, all the old concern in his voice.

Sam woke in the chair, stiff in the blue light of the television, and kicked the glass across the room as his foot jerked out to steady him. His head pounded with whiskey remnants and the voice he'd heard all his life, deep and resonant and so full of care that he couldn't believe his brother was such an unmitigated asshole so much of the time. The glass shattered against the wall and woke him fully.

"Dean?" Sam asked the dark apartment. _Focus, Sam. No ghosts. Everything was burned._..

* * *

  
**"Make Me Shine"**

Sam was sitting in his car on a dark road, wheedling information out of Bobby until Bobby caught on and started to change the topic.

"They're not for you to worry about, Sam. Let Hanna work the case herself. She won't take kindly to you butting your big nose into her hunt. I told you she works alone, and I meant it. Learned that myself the hard way. Did I ever tell you-"

"Yeah, Bobby, you did," Sam said absently, watching Hanna exit the darkened house, scanning the area around her as she pulled the door shut. "Gotta go, Bobby. Thanks for the tip."

"Tip, wha-?" Bobby hung up the phone with a grunt. "Sonofabitch cut me off. "

"Sam's not hunting again… is he?" Jodie asked, looking over her glasses at Bobby and reading the answer in his expression. She frowned.

"He's probably already tracked her down, knowing how quick he is," Bobby admitted.

"You won't let me talk you out of it – what makes you think you can stop him?"

"Sam's different," Bobby said, and she took his hand. "He's past all the crazy of the first few months."

"Past it? He lost the _one_ thing that mattered to him, Bobby. No offense, you're a father to him, but you're not Dean. I know under that gruff exterior, you'd cry like a little girl if I died that way." She watched Bobby soften under her tone. "He's not talking about deals and spells and curses anymore, right?"

"He's too calm."

"Everyone grieves at his own pace. It's just coming up a year since the accident, you know." Jodie reminded him.

"Weren't no accident," Bobby muttered, reaching for the phone again. "Is it a year?" Bobby asked her, unable to believe it. He fidgeted with the phone as he remembered it.

"November 10th. A week from today."

"We need to get out there."

***

Hanna slipped away from the house and took the long way across the field toward the road. Sam watched her get into her car and roll it a good hundred feet before she turned on the engine. She never turned the lights on and Sam was itching to make her, until he finally hit the steering wheel in his rage. Dean would have known there was a car there at the hairpin, on the ice, black as the Impala, if it had had its lights on. He'd have known and not swerved, not spun, not tumbled, not lain there without Sam to talk him through it, one last moment together.

Sam shook his head and wiped his eyes. He grabbed his knife from the glove box and went toward the house; the sliver of moon hid from him behind the trees as he climbed the steps silently. He tried the door, and it opened silently, easily. The smell inside was familiar – fresh blood, a little smoke, something herbal. There would be a dead body here somewhere, newly dead and still warm, he guessed.

In the hallway, light rippled cold against the walls, like water. He looked slowly around the corner and discovered a room with a lap pool, the red-stained water still moving quietly back and forth. Soft lights shone up through the water, outlining a dark figure floating face down. Sam moved on, into an office where a computer softly played music. He nudged the mouse and was momentarily blinded by the brightness of the display. There was a document open, and behind it a desktop picture of a man posing. Sam gently slid the document aside and saw two men with arms around each other's shoulders, photographed atop Half Dome in Yosemite. Both had climbing gear, and the family resemblance was striking.

_Now someone else will hear that his brother's been killed. And they'll never know how or why. Why is a hunter after a guy like this, with a lap pool and a home office? Why kill him, Hanna?_

He wiped the mouse and keyboard carefully and explored further, following the smoke of recently extinguished candles.

 _Oh, that's why_ , Sam thought, reaching the last room before the staircase. On the far wall of the dimly lit room was a shrine filled with religious artifacts that had each been defiled in ways that surprised even him. On the floor between the bed and the wall, he discovered a woman, slumped against the foot of the bed, legs askew and throat cut. Whatever rite they'd been performing, the spell was likely long gone - the symbols had been scraped off to destroy their power.

Sam grabbed his phone and pushed Dean's number without thinking, instead of Bobby's.

"Pick up-" he said before he heard the familiar message.

Dean's voice used to be there, familiar and horrible at once. It was the voice that had kept him sane and alive and safe, that had loved him. It sustained him and tore him up in the first months after Dean died. Now it was gone, his own doing, his finger hovering over the delete button until he finally pushed it.

"Dean!" he whispered out into the dark, full of candle smoke and more blood. He wanted that voice back, those arms around him, and no job or hunt was even close to compensating for that. He couldn't consciously remember how or why he'd finally done it, in a moment of clarity, or how he'd set up Dean's calls to forward to his number. He'd cut off his own brother's voice in the name of 'moving on' and 'healing' and it hadn't healed him.

"Witches. Dean, you'd have a field day in here. You always loved to hate witches," Sam whispered. He felt alone again, lost again, nothing for miles around him. He lifted the Satanic Bible in the center of the altar, and it pulled up the cloth stuck to it in the freshly spilled wax. Beneath the cloth was a rookie mistake, a sigil Hanna hadn't broken.

Sam sketched it in his notebook, then with his knife blade, he scraped at this last symbol, painted long ago and repainted many times over, each layer in the blood of another victim, intensifying the spell. The knife vibrated a bit more than he thought it should have as it scraped over the dark lines, breaking the final curse.

As he stood looking at the shrine, he was certain he could feel something there with him… It was a familiar feeling, one he had had regularly when Dean was around. _Overwhelming, foolhardy cockiness_ , he thought. It saved their lives as often as it got them in trouble and it was permeating the room. Sam looked around wildly, but the dark corners retained their secrets.

Outside he heard a car, a rumbling heavy car. He froze momentarily, unable to believe it, and then went to the window. There was nothing outside in the dark, not even the echo of the Impala.

"Sam, get out. Leave it be," Dean said.

"Dean," Sam gasped again, fighting the sobs that were building. "I'm sorry."

"Sammy shut up and get out of here. Now."

"He's taking it harder than you did," came Tessa's disinterested voice and Dean stiffened. She continued, patronizingly. "Everyone thinks they can help the ones they leave behind."

"I told you I wasn't ready. Do you have to tag along with me everywhere I go?"

"You're not supposed to be here, not after they burned everything. You're a curiosity, Dean. This doesn't happen often in this line of work."

"Then you know I need to do this," Dean replied, not taking his eyes off his brother.

"Have you no respect for the natural order? For anything? Even in death?"

"Especially in death," Dean spat out the words.

"He won't take kindly to your attitude, even if he does find you interesting."

The sound of the car passed and faded, but there were no lights on the road. Sam slid the knife back into its holster without wiping it and dashed outside. The moon's deep grin hung over the road.

* * *

  
**"I Want to Be There (When You Come)"**

The moon was gone now, and Sam could breathe again. His balcony overlooked the same empty street it always did, and the same narrow bit of sky between his building and the next was silent as always. It was the same narrow strip of the universe that he'd seen out the back window of the Impala, but with so few stars now, so little up there to hope for. He had all the answers he needed about sigils and bloodspells that would bring back the dead. He just waited for the question to make sense.

_Do I summon him? No, of course not. He's gone. He'd kick my ass. Ghost or not, he'd kick my ass. Do I bring him back? No, of course not. I could get a zombie, or worse. And he'd still kick my ass. And then tell me to kill him for creating a monster. No, Dean, you rest._

The starry sky above him whirled, strongly influenced by the alcohol in his blood and by how suddenly he jerked his head up to check the sky and back down to check the empty street. _November 10._ Sam thought that Bobby or Jodie would have called, surely, or turned up on his doorstep. But nothing had interrupted his steady, day-long binge. _They must have forgotten. Oh well. On you go, Sam. On you go._

The darkness around him now was still black and mysterious and dangerous, something he'd known since he could first understand Dean's words: Monster, night, dark, bad. It all made sense when Dean said it to him, over and over. Only Dean wasn't afraid of the world, he was angry, and he had a knife in his hand, later a gun when Dad had taught him how, and he taught Sam every night, out in fields or in empty lots – wherever they could find time and place to be alone together.

But over the last year, it was a different kind of darkness without Dean, a lack of clarity that eluded him. When Gabriel had shown him a different reality and an empty life, it was all so clear – sharp and logical and deadly and it made him a killer. But when Dean died, this time…

 _How many times, Dean, three? Four? Should I use that spell, Dean, and maybe make it five?_ "Or should I open my veins and join you?"

He snapped alert at that, sobered by a thought he'd never once let pass his lips, and hadn't even noticed scurrying around his mind in so many months.

"Yeah, I thought about it," he said to the band of sky above him.

"I know, Sammy."

"I really thought about it," Sam went on, talking to the night and the empty street and sky.

"Don't."

"But I knew you'd kill me if I killed myself, so…" Sam was laughing again.

"I'd so kill you," Dean said, but he remained invisible. He was sad, even through the stoic resignation that quickly resettled over him – a condition of his death, Tessa said.

Sam calmed too, and went back inside, flipping on his music.

"Your taste hasn't gotten any better – might even have gotten worse since I died," Dean complained.

He listened for as long as he could, but it was unbearable.

"This Greg Laswell's a complete dou- … he's a pool of emo, Sam, and you're drowning yourself in it and that is NOT how I want you remembering me."

Sam reached for the bottle again.

"And stop drinking! Maybe this will get through to you." Dean did his best to disrupt the stereo, and managed only to make it skip a track, and he winced at the new song. "Even worse. How did you and I ever end up brothers?"

"You can't be his brother any more," Tessa reminded him in the same flat, annoying tone she'd always used with him.

"I will _always_ be his brother," Dean said, his jaw clenched. "And stop popping in like Bewitched."

"You'll move on eventually, they all do. You know how it'll happen? He'll let go of you. He'll stop suffering and smile again. He'll find his way through a day without thinking of you, without reminders, without your life and your death hanging over him, and he'll be glad he did."

"That's what I want," Dean said, watching Sam sink into his chair, eyes closing as his long legs folded awkwardly.

"Then ignore him," Tessa said again. "And come with me."

Dean didn't answer. It seemed to make her leave, and he stuck with what worked.

***

Sam was in a house that same weekend, one he hadn't entered in over a decade. It was a safe house that he was pretty sure even Bobby had never found, one their father used just a few times when they were new to the road and to hunting. It was small and out of the way, listed as abandoned and erased from county rolls so long ago that the switch from paper to electronic records wiped it from existence.

He dismantled the gun and cleaned each piece. The knife rested within easy reach on the side table, edged in dark red that seemed to have soaked into the metal, and he kept his legs spread wide but ready to jump up, a legacy he couldn't shake. It bothered the law partners at meetings when Sam sat a foot back from the table and fidgeted as if he had other places to be.

Sam slid the rod into the barrel, imagining his own death but saying nothing of what he saw, even to himself. He felt the chill in the room and ignored it, because the house had no heating anyway. He saw the lights flicker and ignored it because the lamps were old and unreliable. He couldn't ignore the presence, though –the man at his door who'd been dead and returned from Hell once already, to find him.

It made his skin crawl it was so familiar. His brother's gaze was on him and he couldn't move. He looked to the right and saw Dean, like he'd seen so many other things, there and not there, figments of his mind that he'd driven back behind his own wall until they no longer spoke to him.

"You're not a ghost, Dean," Sam said. "You couldn't be bothered to haunt me."

Dean just raised an eyebrow and vanished.

Sam shuddered a breath in, pain scraping over his heart as his brother disappeared again. He set the gun down and stared again at the empty space in the room and the wall behind, just as visible as before. There were no lights flickering, no cloud of breath visible, no ghost.

"Told you so."

***

Late that night, after half a bottle of Johnny Walker, after staring into the bathroom mirror and saying "Dean Winchester" five times to no avail, Sam slid into unconsciousness and woke to the Impala's deep-throated roar far off in the distance. He listened, not sure if he was still dreaming. It drew closer, the way it always had when Dean arrived home from the things he did that Sam wouldn't ask about. Dean always smelled different each time he came home, like perfume or cologne and Sam eventually found out why, when he was older. He heard the car fade out, and looked at the half-empty bottle. He head throbbed, but he strode purposefully into the dark hall.

He opened the closet door at the end. It held nothing surprising for him as he felt around in the dim light reflecting from the living room. The house creaked loudly in the silence as the wind rustled the trees outside, but they too remained dark and invisible outside the small circle of light spilling from the windows.

His hand found it, a tattered cardboard box, filed there along with so many other things, just in case. _Insurance._ The soft cardboard box sagged as he pulled it off the shelf, almost dumping its contents on the closet floor as he lunged to save them. Dust flew everywhere, and Sam sneezed.

Sam opened it frantically as he rushed back to the living room; the indicator was cracked and the board was peeling, but it had worked once, years ago, on the cold floor of a hospital when his dead brother had spoken to him. He set the board on the coffee table and put a silver coin on top of it.

Sam knelt by the table, waiting as he had years earlier, hoping that Dean would be out there somewhere. He was furious with himself for toying with death, and with Dean, and most of all for even hoping, but he stayed there, hands on the planchette.

The indicator was stuck under his fingers at first, but slowly slid left. He knew that was his own doing, muscles reacting below his conscious mind's detection.

***

"He's not going to reach you that way," Tessa observed, and the scorn in her voice was just too much.

"Shut your mouth," Dean said, biting back the rest for fear she'd do something drastic to him, although she seemed to be waiting him out now, nothing more.

"Dean Winchester," said a familiar voice, and as he emerged from the shadows, high forehead and prominent nose on a cadaverous face, the hair on Dean's neck stood up.

"What took you so long?" Dean asked ungraciously.

"I am a busy man, Dean," said Death, "and _you_ need to remember your place here, as in life."

* * *

  
**"The Killing Moon"**

"You can't!" Tessa yelled at Dean, forgetting herself.

Death turned slowly to her, and she shrank.

"I have many servants, Tessa," he said quietly, and she paled at what he left unsaid.

"So we have a deal?" Dean asked, confidence growing.

"Of course not, Dean. Dead is dead. _Despite_ your flagrant disregard of how things work around here, you aren't going back this time, not even for a minute."

Dean's lips were tight. His eyes went between Death's face and Sam's, beside whom Death stood unnoticed. Sam was holding his hands on the planchette, waiting with all the patience he could muster, looking up as if Dean were in Heaven and not there, right next to him.

"Dean, I have to talk to you," Sam said softly, pleading with a pain Dean hadn't heard before.

Dean's eyes flicked back to Death, who was waiting without emotion.

"No," Death said quietly and calmly. "Now tell me, why is Sam so persistent?"

"He's just like that. Always has been. He pushes until he gets his way. That's how we ended up-" Dean bit off the secret, but Death was not shocked, or even remotely interested.

"Is he going to come over, too?" Death asked, his tone conveying the expectant mood of a host inquiring after guests.

"I don't know," Dean replied, watching a drunk and wobbly Sam misinterpret the sliding planchette as the answer he wanted.

"I _do_ know, Dean. But it isn't his time."

"Then stop him."

"I can't. Those who seek me out will find the way. Tessa and the others are there to meet them, but we can't stop them. Not part of the deal."

"Let me reap him then," Dean said impulsively.

Tessa gaped, but Death considered the idea for a good thirty seconds, listening to Sam's fervent prayers and examining Dean in minute detail.

"You weren't very successful the last time I gave you a job," he said finally, mouth disappointed but eyes alive with curiosity.

"I can do this," Dean said, with no idea of what reaping entailed.

"You would be a terrible reaper," Death said, and Tessa nodded in complete agreement. "But you are the only one who can do what needs to be done. Sam is dreadfully stubborn, and I can't abide that. Throws everything off."

Dean moved to kneel by the table, his hands reaching out for the planchette.

"No," Death said as firmly and implacably as always and Dean looked up, clearly distraught. "A time to every thing, Dean."

***

Dean returned off and on through the night, unable to stop what he saw approaching like a truck roaring down the highway, a truck that would drift across the line and wipe Sam out and Dean with him. He relived his death that night for the first time in a long while, and Sam tossed in uneasy sleep not three feet away.

Bobby arrived the next morning, following the signal of the phone he'd given Sam. It was a bad fight, worse even than when a soulless Sam had tried to kill Bobby outright because it started the minute Bobby got out of his car, out on the sidewalk, in front of Jodie.

"How many days late?" Sam asked the minute he saw them, and Bobby's fake good humor evaporated. Jodie grabbed onto his arm for fear he'd try to smack Sam back to his senses only to end up getting the worst of it. Sam was so clearly drunk that Jodie's police training was what finally worked to talk Sam down.

The number of bottles spilling from the recycling bin in his kitchen scared her, but worse, Sam's phone rang in the middle of things and they got to watch him kill his career in under a minute flat, before he flung the phone down the hall, shattering it against the door.

Bobby tried reasoning, and then scolding, and finally settled on tough love, grabbing Sam's arms and telling him the truth.

"You are a _son_ to me, Sam, you both were, and I lost him too. That's just our life."

"He didn't die in the life, Bobby, he died up in the hills because some idiot couldn't be bothered to pull far enough off the road to make out, or even leave his taillights on."

"As I recall, he told you to live your life. You call this a good start, boy? Skipping work, messing with another hunter's case, leaving your tools out on the friggin' kitchen counter?" Bobby yelled, staring at the knife and gloves Sam still hadn't bothered to clean after coming back from the witches' house.

"I was doing research," Sam said, the words slurring as a sad embarrassment overcame him.

Bobby let go of him. His face grew gentler, his eyes wet with tears he was struggling hard to contain.

"You are not a hunter, Sam. You're out. You got out, so stay out."

"The sigil I found there is a resurrection spell, or at least I think it is-"

Bobby slapped Sam hard across the face, so hard that Jodie gasped and caught Sam as he stumbled, glaring at Bobby. Sam steadied himself and sank into the couch, silent. Jodie pulled Bobby outside to cool down.

***

"Use your talents, Dean, your way with him. You will make him turn back when no one else can," said Death.

"On one condition," Dean countered.

"On three conditions, all of them mine," Death replied, unmoved by Dean's emotions or his bravado. "First, you reap Sam, and then, you send him back. Through all of it, you say nothing of what you know."

"I don't know anything." Dean admitted, going with ignorance, his strong suit.

"You will, Dean, soon. Reapers know so many things, and you _must_ keep your mouth _shut._ It's a tall order, I know."

Dean closed his mouth without saying the words he very much wanted to and glared at the floor.

"You agree?" Death asked.

Dean nodded imperceptibly.

"Better hurry then," said Death, and struck him between the eyes with the silver head of his cane. It hit Dean like a hundred cattle prods and when his mind cleared, he knew. He knew every bit of the big story. It was mildly disappointing, like flipping to the end of a book and spoiling the surprise.

He found himself back in the same safehouse he'd been in the night before, and Tessa was with him, to his dismay. The Ouija board sat unused; Sam was nowhere to be seen.

"What are you, my nanny?" Dean asked.

“Don’t say a word. About anything," she said.

"I get the point," Dean said, rubbing his forehead. "I have the entire DeathWiki in here and it hurts. Now get lost. I can do this."

"Find Sam before it's too late," she said, the smallest trace of concern in her voice, and was gone.

It took Dean all of a few seconds to realize that Sam was in the bathroom, staring at the mirror. Sam was talking to himself.

***

"Sam, you look like Hell," Dean said.

"You won't come to me, I'll come to you," Sam said and picked up the knife he'd used to scrape blood off the altar. It was filthy.

"No, no no SAM!" Dean yelled out, but he had no effect, could not stop the blade from opening up Sam's arm.

Sam winced and gritted his teeth against the pain. On the toilet, the whiskey bottle stood empty.

For all the knowledge of the world now roaming free in Dean's head, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Another silent slit opened in Sam's arm, and the white sink was flecked with bright red blood, over and over. Dean pressed his hands against the cuts but the blood flowed undiminished.

"Dean, I'm sorry. I know you wanted- I can't find that kind of life, don’t think either of us ever could have. I hope I can find _you_. I have to talk to you."

"Sam! You can talk to me! Just talk! Don't do this!"

Sam sliced into his other arm, wincing despite the numbness of the alcohol, trailing the black, blood-crusted edge of the blade through a third and fourth wound, then the knife slipped from his failing fingers and he stumbled back, raining blood across the linoleum. Dean concentrated on being there, on touching Sam, repeating an endless litany of no's that had no more effect than his hands.

Sam turned aside and staggered out of the bathroom to fall across the foot of the bed.

"SAM!!" He watched his brother fading away and could do nothing, yet.

* * *

  
**"Get in the Car"**

The hush deepened around Sam. There was no light or sound, no heartbeat. The sound of Dean clearing his throat woke Sam in an instant.

Dean was standing not four feet from the bed where Sam lay, and he was just shaking his head side to side, watching Sam with that same knowing older brother stare that Sam had woken up to for years. He raised an eyebrow.

Sam sat straight up, eyes locked on Dean, then leaped up and ran into an embrace he hadn't felt for a year, the familiar tight hug that smelled of Dean's leather jacket and breath from the back seat of the Impala, all the warm familiarity of the man he'd found again. There were two arms around him that would never really let go, ever.

Dean looked over Sam's shoulder as he returned the hug. He held the Sam who wasn't alive but wasn't dead in his arms and watched his brother's motionless body, blood spreading in dark circles on the bedspread. He hadn't expected to see Sam die so many times, and it was no better now.

After a minute or so, Dean pulled out of the embrace to look Sam in the face, judge his mood. Sam stared so hard it made Dean blink.

"Come on, let's go," Dean said. "Time to show you a few things."

Sam gasped as Dean lead him out the front door; Dean turned back to smile at Sam's reaction.

"I guess since she died with me, I got to keep her. Looks as good as I do, considering the accident we had."

Sam's face fell.

"Hey, look, you're dead now too, Mr. Kill-Myself-Like-An-Emo-Chick, so no worrying about the ugly bits."

"Dean, I missed the car too. Shut up and get in."

Dean beamed.

***

They drove, and as the darkness passed around them, time seemed to make little difference. They took up the broad front seat between them, Sam daring to let his knee rest against Dean's. The landscape was familiar, but vague. It looked like places Sam recalled, but the headlights only lit a small portion of it.

"Where are we?" he asked finally.

"Not sure."

"Is it Heaven, like Zachariah showed us?"

"No sign of Ellen, or Ash. Not so far. But it's big place. You can drive for weeks, or what seems like weeks. I drive a lot. It helps me clear my head."

"Last time you went driving to 'clear your head', it didn't work out so great," Sam said bitterly.

"Yeah," Dean breathed out on a sigh. He kept his eyes on the road, twitching his head in a little side-ways shrug. "Sorry 'bout that."

Sam felt the springs of the seat below him slowly rise and fall, dulling the road, rocking him gently as Dean drove on and on. It was heaven.

"Picked up a girl too. Car still works for that here," Dean said, a cocky smile forming.

Sam turned to look at Dean, but he didn't see any clues in the half-smile that was only his brother's love for the Impala.

"Who?" Sam asked finally.

"Not important. I needed someone to talk to."

"Where is she now?"

"She got out," Dean said matter-of-factly. He seemed resigned, calm even.

"Why?" Sam had to ask. _Why would anyone get out of a car with you?_

The road curved around a bend and the moon appeared over the trees, full and huge, filling a corner of the sky.

"Because I kept talking about you."

***

Sam's brow remained crinkled, and Dean watched him closely. Finally it was too much.

"What, Sam?" Dean was frustrated. He remembered the long days in the car, decoding Sam's facial expressions. "What is that face for? You're dead, yeah, but you're with me."

"I don't like the moon," Sam said, his eyes trying to avoid it.

"Did you lose too much blood back there? Are you gonna go all werewolf on me? What?"

"There was a full moon the night you died."

"Yeah, I could see it through the side window. There've been a lot more since then. You still stuck on that?" He watched Sam struggle.

"Full moon there is a new moon here. Not sure why, but it was dark when I turned up. If it hadn't been for my baby here…" he stroked the dash, as undamaged as he was now. "Who knew cars had souls, huh, Sam?"

"That doesn't make any sense, Dean." Sam was somehow jealous of the car, he realized. _His fucking car gets through and I don't?_

"Not sure why, but science never was my strong suit," Dean continued, seeming to answer the question in Sam's mind.

"It's not science, Dean, it's… well we never did burn it. She was a wreck. We scrapped her."

Dean had no response to that, and they fell into silence. Dean's hands clenched the wheel.

The road curved again and the moon slipped slowly behind some clouds, its dim glow lighting a landscape that seemed to be drawn straight from the nighttime blur Sam had stared at for hours while their father drove them along, always hunting one more thing. He'd been able to see the dark world outside the warm closeness of the Impala, with its smell of three men and their stale laundry and leftover food. In that car window, lit by the glow of the dashboard radio, Sam could just make out Dean's profile, watching the road or watching their father drive, waiting for him to speak or look back at him, or lolling back as sleep overtook him. Sam had wondered then, as a kid, what he would do if Dean didn't return from a hunt.

Beside him now, Dean babbled on about the moon and Sam returned to this car and to this Dean, and took it all in, delighted at Dean's delight. He was here - he was with Dean. He was home – dead, but home.

* * *

  
**"Nothing Lasts Forever"**

The road went on for hours, for what could have been days, but Sam wasn't hungry or thirsty or even sleepy. The conversation ebbed and flowed, sometimes all on his side as he talked about the work he'd found, sometimes on Dean's as he told of places he'd discovered here that he thought were gone forever. He never spoke of his own death, and Sam didn't ask for as long as he could stand it.

But he needed to know. He was about to ask when Dean pulled off the side of the road and Sam saw a roadhouse. Not Harvelle's, but a close match, so close he had to look at Dean to be sure he wasn't dreaming.

"Good food," Dean said, smiling.

The place was nearly deserted but for a few other diners that Sam didn't recognize. They had the same odd look that he felt on his own face – wonder and disbelief and a strange calmness over it all.

Sam was about to raise the question of Dean's death when the waitress brought them two frosty beers. He promptly forgot it.

"It's cold!" Sam said.

"It's good. Good beer in Heaven – makes sense to me, Sam."

"So we - _WE_ ," Sam emphasized, while still keeping voice low "the Winchester brothers ended up in Heaven? After all that we've done?"

Dean shrugged and took a sip. "Just enjoy the beer."

"How did it happen, Dean?" came bursting out. Sam's eyes were on Dean, unblinking. The pain of a year alone was there in them.

"Do we have to? This was such a nice date."

"I should have been there."

"Oh,- " Dean's expression was verging on anger. "What the hell for, Sam, you've seen me die. A thousand times, if I remember correctly, and you were there for every single one of them. Didn't help, didn't stop it, didn't make you feel better."

"I could have-"

"No, you couldn't have. Tessa made it clear that it was my time. Not how I would have chosen it, but here we are, you and me, dead."

"They said you were going sixty, Dean. On a mountain road, at night."

"Sam-" He stopped, unable to explain. He felt his eyes drawn up to Sam's, and recalled every fight they'd ever had. Sam wanted to be in charge so Dean let him think he was. "I had to know if I could keep going. That life we had, it wasn't a life. It was a curse, and you know it. Driving let me know I was still alive and still wanted to be. And I did, but I swerved so the people in the other car could live too and you've never seen my baby try so hard to get a grip on the road…" His voice faded out.

"Dean, I killed myself – I cut-"

"Sam, I was there, I saw."

"That's kind of on the DON'T list," Sam continued, confused.

"You aren't going to Hell, if that's what you're thinking, and neither am I."

"How do you know that?"

"I just do. Look, we'll get some food, you'll feel better. You've been eating crap for months, Sam."

"How do you-?"

"I can't explain it," Dean said quickly, lying poorly.

"Why are you even still around? We burned your bones."

"No idea, Sam. Maybe the car was just too much a part of me? Ghost Impala!" Dean said, laughing. "I like that!"

"Have you been watching me?" Sam asked in confusion and rising embarrassment.

"No, no, nothing creepy-stalker-with-issues, it's just – you called out pretty loud, and I heard you. I came when I could."

"And you were waiting for me to die?"

"I could see you weren't exactly going through the five stages, Sam. You got stuck somewhere between denial and alcoholism."

"So what next?"

"We just enjoy the time here, I guess. We'll move on at some point. Speaking of which-"

"Together?"

He kept asking, and Dean kept dodging; he wouldn't talk about death, or Death, or what it all meant.

***  
Sam looked frustrated, but it slowly faded into relief. Gradually an even older dynamic took over: Dean told stories and Sam listened, asking just the right questions to keep Dean talking, to keep Dean with him.

Eventually, Sam noticed the few other people there were paying close attention, listening even as they tried to appear disinterested.

"Time to go," Dean said, and cleared his throat.

Outside, the moon had grown even larger, it seemed. Dean's face gave away a moment of concern and Sam saw it clearly in the moonlight.

"Let's get moving Sam, back in the car, on the road. It's what we do."

"Where to?"

"Look, Sam, all I know is, people die at their appointed time or it _messes things up_. And no one can know when that time is."

"You sound like a reaper, Dean," Sam said, and his laugh died as the thought became real. "Am I _that_ unlucky? That you were the one to reap me?"

"Unlucky? I'd be a great reaper," Dean bluffed.

"You'd have to send me on to whatever's up next."

"No, I'd send you back to see if you-" Dean looked around as he put his hand on Sam's arm. "-you know, if you could not mess it up so bad this time."

"You wouldn't."

"Sam you can be what you want to be, but live while you have life in you. It won't be forever. We'll be-"

A beam of brilliant light ripped Sam from him, and Dean was standing on a dark, lonely highway, farther than he'd ever been from his brother.

"DAMMIT," was all he could say, his jaw clenching as the curse vanished into the pale wash of morning.

Sam closed his eyes against that light, brighter than angelic fire, and when it finally faded, he could hear Bobby outside, calling his name, trying to pick the lock.

As he came to, he heard Bobby's voice and felt Bobby's hands lifting him up, felt Jodie wrapping tight bandages around his wrists. The pounding in his brain slowly aligned with the pounding in his wrists and his chest, and he was brotherless again. Alive, but unable to breathe under the loss pressing against his chest. He reached out for Dean one more time before he opened his eyes, but there was only darkness. _So far from home, I don't know if I'm comin' or goin'._

***

Across the road from Dean, in the cold light of the moon, Death looked, more than ever, like Death.

"I must commend you for keeping your promise and not revealing how little time Sam has left. You might make a good reaper yet." He paused, clearly considering the insanity of what he'd just said. He chuckled. "For now, though, you are a trainee, with souls to collect. If you insist on using this loud muscle car to take them where they need to go, I wouldn't object. Black is a bit cliché, but the cassette deck lends a classic touch."

"You promised me-"

"I always keep my promises, Dean. Sam is yours. _When the time comes_."

* * *

  
**"Make Me Shine"**

Dean stopped by Sam's place one last time, no longer willing or able to comment on the dismal housekeeping or the awful music. He sat by the bed and watched Sam tossing, unable to find peace.

"When you were young, I used to get you to sleep by putting you in the back seat and letting her idle," Dean said gently. "Should still work."

He left the car rumbling outside and returned to Sam, only to find him sitting upright, listening for a sound he could barely hear.

"He said I couldn't contact you again. Never said anything about the car." Dean smiled at his own cleverness.

A smile crept into the corner of Sam's mouth too, but his eyes were far away, not focusing on Dean but on a memory.

Dean waited until Sam was asleep before he left.

"See you soon, Sam. Make the most of your year."

* * *

 **THE END**  



End file.
